VESPERS IN THE BARRENS
A century after the magnates
chewed the landscape bare,
jack and pitch pines festoon
the barren’s floor
with their brown paper needles
and rigid brawny cones.
Black bears snap to attention,
glare at me
with that slack-faced suspicion,
bolt and sprint through the understory.
When I surmounted the steep hill
and looked over the pit’s verge,
vertigo seized me, spinning me
above the gouged cicatrix
where they extracted the ore.
I collapsed, consumed
by the assurance of your inevitable
if not imminent death,
breathed,
put my hand into the
sandy centennial loam and
rubbed the needles
between my fingers
and prayed at vespers
for the first time in twenty years.
* * *
This is another in my poem of the day series that I share on Facebook. You can backtrack through the posts or use the tag “Poem of the Day” to read previous entries.
Peter Walks for Democracy 